Sacred Heritage: The Archaeology of Medieval Beliefs

Professor Roberta Gilchrist, Professor of Archaeology and Research Dean at University of Reading will present the prestigious 2017 Rhind Lectures on “Sacred heritage: the archaeology of Medieval beliefs”. Medieval churches and monasteries are key features of the historic landscape, contributing to regional identity and sense of place, and core to the study of medieval archaeology. Yet the relationship between heritage and medieval religious sites has received relatively little critical reflection. These lectures will place research on medieval beliefs within a wider framework of sacred heritage, reflecting on issues of value, authenticity and interpretation. Archaeological evidence for British monasticism and religious material culture will be explored in relation to regional identity, practices of magic and healing, memory, myth and the biography of place.< em>More details to follow… Roberta Gilchrist is Professor of Archaeology and Research Dean at the University of Reading. She has published extensively on the archaeology of medieval religion and belief and their intersection with gender, magic and the life course. She has published pioneering works on medieval nunneries (1994), hospitals (1995), burial practices (2005) and popular devotion (2012), and major studies on Glastonbury Abbey (2015) and Norwich Cathedral Close (2005). She is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, a trustee of Antiquity and former president of the Society for Medieval Archaeology. She was voted Current Archaeology’s ‘Archaeologist of the Year 2016’.